Chapter 14
Lauren
Lauren had always loved the week between Christmas and New Year’s.
That soft, suspended pocket of time when the world seemed to hold its breath—when the rush was over, but the lights still glowed.
A grace period. A chance to linger in warmth before the year turned cold again.
This year, the quiet felt different.
This year, it pressed against her, thick and airless.
CHRISTMAS IS LOVE.
The words mocked her, her handmade centerpiece still spelling out in gold letters what she no longer believed.
She stood in the living room, surrounded by the remains of Christmas—the tree full of her bespoke ornaments. Lauren reached for one. She wrapped it in tissue paper and laid it gently in the box.
Piece by piece, she dismantled Christmas.
The felt stockings she’d sewed. The peppermint she’d glued. The tree skirt she’d constructed.
Her fingers brushed the tiny beaded Elvis jumpsuit she’d stitched by hand. White felt, rhinestones, the miniature cape.
She loved this ornament.
She loved how every December, the moment she hung it on the tree, she was right back in his arms—swaying on the dance floor at their wedding, his cheek against her temple, Elvis singing about falling in love, about how some things were just meant to be.
She'd believed it. That they were meant to be.
Elvis had also sung about fools.
Her chest constricted.
She set the ornament aside quickly—too quickly—before she could feel the full weight of what it meant now.
Judith’s brittle smile as she praised how industrious Lauren was. Richard’s small, polite pauses. And Tom saying nothing at all.
She’d thought he hadn’t noticed his parents insulting her. But now she knew the truth.
He hadn’t been ignorant of their judgment. He’d shared it.
Lauren’s hands stilled on the garland.
She felt the waves of humiliation wash over her again. The way he’d folded her quilt away. The pendant resting on Mia’s throat. Opening up the envelope she’d thought—for one hopeless, stupid moment—contained a love letter.
She kept working. The tink of glass on glass filled the silence as she packed away the baubles—careful, methodical, precise.
All those years of feeling judged by her in-laws, of being glad that her husband didn’t see her through their eyes.
He had. He always had.
She’d always loved Christmas. She’d plastered the house with all of that love. She’d made sure it was full of her color, her warmth, her joy.
And Tom had seen it as something to endure.
Lauren wrapped another ornament. Her reflection stared back at her, warped in the curve of the glass. A woman too classless, too eager, too much.
Tears blurred her vision. All these years he’d been embarrassed of her.
Her gaze drifted back to the white jumpsuit ornament, lying alone on the carpet. Their first dance. Their vows.
The night he’d whispered that loving her was the easiest thing he’d ever done.
And then she thought of Tom telling her I can’t be married to someone like this, Lauren.
Lauren pressed her hands to her eyes. Just twenty minutes, she promised herself. Twenty minutes to break. To feel it. To let the loss bleed out.
Then she’d wash her face, make coffee, and start again.
She deserved better. She knew that. Better than being looked down on. Better than being tolerated.
She sat in the wreckage of tinsel and tissue paper. She’d thought her marriage was based on respect, she’d thought Tom would always stand beside her.
She’d been a fool.
Her mother's face filled the screen, sun-bright and beaming. Behind her, Lauren could see palm trees and brilliant blue sky—so different from the gray December cold outside her window.
"Sweetheart!" Linda's voice was warm and slightly too loud, the way it always was on video calls. "We're in port! Can you see us? Can you hear us?"
"I can hear you, Mom." Lauren tried to make her smile reach her eyes. "You look so tan!"
Her father's face appeared over her mother's shoulder, his baseball cap askew, his cheeks pink with sun. "The weather is incredible. Eighty degrees!"
"That sounds amazing." Lauren's voice came out steadier than she felt.
"Where's Tom?" Gerald asked.
Lauren's throat went tight. "He's... not here right now."
"Honey." Her mother's voice had gone soft. "What's wrong?"
And just like that, Lauren's careful composure crumbled.
“I’ve left him,” she said, the words tumbling out. "Tom and I… we had a fight on Christmas and I threw him out and now we're—we're separated."
"Oh, sweetheart." Her mother's face filled with concern. "Tell us what happened."
So Lauren did. The check, the necklace on Mia's throat. Tom calling her Christmas crafts cringe. Tom telling her that he couldn’t be married to someone like her. All of it came spilling out while her parents listened with matching expressions of distress.
"That boy is an idiot,” her father said when she'd finished.
"Gerald," her mother chided, but her eyes were flashing.
"And his parents." Gerald's face was getting redder. "I've always tried to be polite about those people, but they've looked down their noses at you since day one. And Tom just sits there and lets them."
Lauren pressed her hand over her mouth. She'd never heard her father speak badly about Tom's family before.
"Where is he now?" her mother asked gently.
Lauren grimaced. "He's staying at your house. I was going to but he insisted I stay here. He took your spare keys.”
Her parents exchanged one of those married-couple looks.
"Well," her mother said carefully. "At least he had the sense to make sure you kept the house he built for you."
“Plus, it makes it much more convenient for me when we get back and I need to find him and break his legs,” her father said.
Even as that made her laugh, Lauren felt hot tears spilling down her cheeks.
"We should come home," her father said abruptly. "We should cut the cruise short and come home."
"No!" Lauren said quickly. "Dad, no. You've been planning this for years. I'm fine. I promise I'm fine."
"You're crying," her mother pointed out.
"I'm crying because it’s nice to see your faces,” Lauren said, which was at least partially true. “Don't come home early. Please just—enjoy the sunshine. Enjoy the rest of your trip. I'll be okay."
"We love you, honeybun,” her father said. His voice was gruff with emotion. "And we're so proud of you."
Her mom dabbed her eyes with a napkin. “You’ve always been stronger than you think, you know that?”
Lauren tried to smile.
When they finally hung up, Lauren sat in the quiet kitchen, holding her phone against her chest.
She was stronger than she thought.
The boxes were stacked neatly beside the stairs—five years of their Christmases folded and sorted with care. Five years of glitter and glue guns and late-night crafting. Five years of unforgivable naivety.
They were supposed to be stored for next Christmas. But nothing in those boxes felt like it belonged to her future anymore. She wouldn’t let herself be that stupid ever again.
Instead, she pulled on her coat and grabbed her gloves. The air bit her cheeks as she stepped outside. Snow was falling in soft, lazy flakes that caught in her hair and melted against her skin.
She dragged the first box to the curb.
The cardboard edges dug into her palms, the weight awkward and uneven. She left it beside the trash can and went back for the next one.
Two trips. Then three. Then four.
She hesitated. There was something else she needed to get rid of.
Her legs felt wooden as she climbed the stairs, crossed the hallway, opened the bedroom door. She reached into the drawer where she’d stashed the lingerie—delicate, lacy, chosen with trembling hope.
She carried it downstairs and shoved it deep into the last box, burying it beneath a heap of tinsel and tissue paper.
What a fucking joke.
She pulled the box outside, her breath coming out in white bursts. Struggling with it until it sat with the rest of the trash.
The boxes looked strange sitting there in the snow: brown cardboard with neat labels, pieces of her heart packed away forever. The street was quiet. No one to see her little funeral for five years of devotion.
She stood, watching the snow drift down and settle over the boxes, softening their edges until they almost looked pretty again.
“I deserve better,” she said softly.
She said it again, louder this time, her voice louder. “I deserve better.”
She turned from the boxes, walked inside, and closed the door on them—and on him.
Her craft room was tucked away up in the attic—cramped under the sloped ceiling, hot in summer and cold in winter.
Even when Tom was planning their future together, designing their dream home, he'd been ashamed of her.
Lauren had been so blind.
This was her place. The place where she created with her own two hands.
And she was done apologizing for it.
She surveyed her kingdom as the glue-gun warmed. The pegboards lined with scissors and ribbons. The shelves crowded with mason jars full of buttons and beads. The baskets overflowing with fabric scraps and yarn in every color imaginable.
Lauren pulled out a wire wreath frame. She wove chains of greenery through the frame with practiced efficiency. Twist, tuck, secure. She'd made dozens of wreaths over the years.
It was bold. It was bright. It was perfect.
She added pinecones—ones she'd spray-painted gold weeks ago. They gleamed against the evergreen, unapologetic and gorgeous.
Holly berries next. Bright and defiant.
She eyed the wreath critically. It was loud, gaudy, hopelessly overstuffed—and she loved it. Every glittering, glorious inch of it.
She cut a length of ribbon long enough to drape across the wreath like a banner, her scissors slicing through with a satisfying snip. White satin, crisp and clean.
Then she grabbed her stencils and paint.
Her hand was steady as she painted the first letter with bold, even strokes.
Lauren didn’t stop until the final letter. She sat back, looking at the words she'd created. Not whispered, not hidden, not tucked away in a journal somewhere. Painted in bold red across white satin, surrounded by evergreen and gold and all the festive beauty she knew how to create.
I DESERVE BETTER.
The ribbon cut across all that festive greenery and gold pinecones like a slash of truth. Beautiful and brutal. Festive and furious.
Her manifesto. Her declaration of independence.
She looked around the cramped attic space—this room Tom had designed to be out of sight, out of mind. All these supplies, all this creative potential, shoved into the least important corner of the house because what she did here embarrassed him.
Well, she was done putting up with a husband like that.
She deserved better.